The lone holdout was state Sen. Steve Martin, a Chesterfield County lawmaker running for lieutenant governor.

Candidates for that office and attorney general were asked to give the party $10,000 apiece; the voluntary fee for gubernatorial candidates is $25,000.

In addition to those donations, candidates were required to submit mandatory fees representing 2 percent of the salary of the office they seek.

That amounts to $1,452.84 for lieutenant governor candidates, $6,000 for attorney general contenders and $7,000 from those running for governor.

Contacted Monday, Martin confirmed he hadn’t paid the voluntary fee.

Ouch.

Martin was widely considered to be the insider “safe” pick from the Richmond/Chesterfield crowd. When even JMDD, Jackson, Stewart, and others considered to be “second tier” candidates file anyway?

Martin’s chances just took a huge nosedive.

Meanwhile, you can tell the big difference between front-tier and second-tier candidates by the emphasis they put on the filing deadline. First-tier candidates barely made this a news event. Second-tier candidates who struggled to get across the finish line treat this as if they just won the marathon.

…when today was just the starting block.

The final news in all of this is that Cuccinelli now becomes the official GOP nominee for Governor — and while Salahi insists on an independent bid for governor, his failure to raise $10K to participate in the convention in an official capacity suggests that party crashing may work at the White House, just not at the Executive Mansion.

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I haven’t gotten a straight answer on this yet–I’d heard rumblings that the voluntary fee was required in order to get a list of delegates. If that’s true, then yeah, Martin is DEFINITELY screwed. However, alot of the “perks” can be bought separately–save the war rooms and preferential sign placement (and with this many candidates, somebody who paid the 10k is going to get screwed anyways). Maybe Martin figured he’d just go a la carte. However, given that he pointed to the prohibition on raising money, I’d say this could very well be a cash flow issue–something we’ll know tomorrow a bit after 5.

http://www.facebook.com/shaunkenney Shaun Kenney

Could be a cash flow issue… could be that Martin on principle simply didn’t want to pay. I know everyone was complaining about the filing fee from one of two perspectives: (1) that it was a nuisance and a way to milk campaigns to pay for conventions, or (2) that it was a prohibitive cost that prevented candidates from participating fully.

Now depending on your viewpoint… if you’re a first-tier candidate, you probably don’t appreciate all the others scurrying on board for the mere cost of $10K. If, OTOH, you are a candidate who would not otherwise see the light of day in a primary, but struggles to raise $10K and sees this as a major victory… well… that doesn’t bode well for the second-stringers.

At the end of the day, convention candidates who are complaining about the fee probably need to realize that they would otherwise not be viable candidates without the convention structure. As for the top-tier folks, they probably need to realize that conventions are cheaper than primaries… and get to work.

http://www.facebook.com/craig.orndorff Craig Leroy Orndorff

Martin could spin it as a positive. “I’m so damn cheap……”

http://www.facebook.com/craig.m.kilby Craig M Kilby

Don’t know much of anything about the people running for Lt. Gov, but got my piece of campaign literature in the mail today from Pete Snyder, “convervative, innovator, entrepreneur” His theme is to run against MSNBC news. Interesting ploy.

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